


Arrangement

by sleepylotus



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: F/M, i just want them to talk ok?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 11:25:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18281669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepylotus/pseuds/sleepylotus
Summary: Rio and Beth discuss the fallout of 'Vette Smash 2019.Or:Because she was his. Maybe she really didn’t know it yet, but she was going to.





	Arrangement

**Author's Note:**

> So...this is pretty much Lucia's (the amaaazing Niham87's) fault. We stayed up chatting about Good Girls and I tossed and turned all night because Rio and Beth wouldn't shut up inside my head. XD Thank you for that, Diabla! ::muah!:: <3<3<3

 

“What were you _thinking?”_

Rio took his sweet time answering her. In part, because that was just the game he played, and in part because her eyes flashed like aquamarine fire when she was mad, and it kinda took his fucking breath away.

He resented her for that, a little. But then, he was learning to embrace it. The moment he’d decided not to kill her for dropping a dime on him, he’d known he was in trouble.

Doomed, even.

But if Rio was good at anything, it was taking a bad situation he found himself in and turning it to his advantage.

“I could ask the same thing of you, sweetheart.”

She’d been talking about taking a crowbar to that ugly-as-fuck acid yellow ‘vette, but his question was more in the general sense.

“Don’t _sweetheart_ me, buster.”

Rio’s eyebrows flew sky high, and it really took every ounce of his self-control not to bust out laughing.

“Mamma, I bent that sweet ass over the sink in the bathroom just over there not two days ago,” he said, pointing to the end of the now deserted bar. “I got the right.”

Because she was _his._ Maybe she really didn’t know it yet, but she was going to.  

He tried not to think on that night in the dealership, and how it had felt like she tore out his heart with those pretty little hands when she told him with the barest shake of her head and fear in her eyes that she hadn’t yet told Dean about their encounter in the bathroom. For a few seconds at least, he’d seen _red,_ and Car Man was lucky the only thing Rio smashed that night was the car.  

Beth made a face that suggested she was seriously considering murdering him, but wisely she held her tongue. She’d hadn’t come to the bar at 10am after dropping off the kids to discuss _that_ anyway.

“You _gave_ me that money. And then you took it away. Why?”

“Let’s say I’m just keepin’ it safe you for, baby. You was fixin’ to do a stupid thing.”

Beth racked her brains, but for the life of her couldn’t fathom how he knew she’d planned to burn it. And maybe in hindsight that would have been a little stupid—but supposedly it had been hers, and that wasn’t any of his business.

“Excuse me?”

“How much you let Car Man throw away on inflatable monkeys before you realized he was wastin’ it?”

Suddenly feeling idiotic all over again for trusting Dean, Beth bit the inside of her cheek, looking down at her reflection in the shiny bar top. “I’m not really sure,” she admitted, resenting her husband all the more for keeping her in the dark. They each had their own super powers her ass.

Unless his power was being a dumb shit, that is.

Or maybe she was the dumb shit for staying married to him in the first place…

Rio watched her expression fall as these thoughts made their way through her brain, and his own heart went with it. Why did he hate it _so much_ when she didn’t look happy?

“You gotta quit lookin’ to him for the answers, Elizabeth. He ain’t gonna save you.”

Beth closed her eyes, feeling tears sting behind her eyes lids, and could she have picked a _worse_ time to break down? “I know,” she admitted. “I think I’ve known that for a while, actually. He just can’t help himself. He’s like a junkie…but he’s addicted to acting like a dumbass.” She blew out a long breath, coming to grips with another difficult truth.

 The man who always bailed her out when her shit hit the fan wasn’t Dean.

It was Rio.

Somehow, it was true. He’d intimidated her and threatened her, nearly given her a heart attack more times than she could count…but when she was really in a bind for money it was Rio who always gave her the opportunity to do something for _herself_.

“Why didn’t you kill him?” Beth asked suddenly, turning those impossibly blue eyes up to his.

_Because it would have hurt her._

_Because he didn’t want to make her scrub brains from her own floor._

_Because…_

“Just a bad shot, I guess,” he answered quickly, before he could dig himself any deeper a hole with thoughts he shouldn’t be having.

Beth narrowed her eyes, not believing Rio for a second. He handled that flashy gun like an extension of himself—she had a feeling he could drive tacks with that thing, much less shoot a man in the heart.

Rio’s voice lowered an octave in a way that sent shivers down Beth’s spine as he asked, “Did you _want_ me to kill him?” Because he’d thought about it. Deep in his black little heart lived a place where he thought of disposing of Dean like yesterday’s garbage so that he and Beth could move on to better things, _daily_.

Beth allowed herself to think of how much _easier_ her life would have been without Dean for approximately 3.2 seconds before quickly answering, “No! No.”

“Hmm.” Rio’s eyes glittered sharp as obsidian, missing nothing. He read a novel written in that pause, and it was interesting. Information he would save for later, for sure, if things came to that. And Car Man was a _dumb_ muthafucker—so the possibilities were more likely _inevitabilities_.

“You still love him then?”

Beth looked away again, studying herself in the mirror behind the bar. _No._ That was the easy answer. The simple two letter summation that would have been the right answer even, had their lives not been complicated with four children. _Yes_ was the complicated answer—and somehow also true. She still loved Dean, but not as her mate or her provider or her protector. She loved Dean like her fifth child, someone she felt obligated to take care of, but couldn’t trust to do the same for her.

“It’s complicated.”

“Is it?”

“He’s the father of my children, Rio. Did you really think I would just announce to him when we got home, _Hey, the past twenty years have been fun but I just fucked Gang Friend in the bathroom and I think we should call it quits._?”

“Gang Friend?” Rio furrowed his brow at his pseudonym, and Beth kind of wanted to laugh, and kind of wanted to cry.

“That’s what you took away from what I just said?”

“Look, I got a baby mamma too, but if you don’t love ‘em anymore you don’t love ‘em.”

“Oh, I bet _baby mamma_ really appreciated that.”

“She left me, actually.”

 _Imagine that._ Beth was smart enough not to say it out loud.

“What’s she like?” asked Beth quietly, looking down at her fingernails. “Your _baby mamma?_ ”

“Cute. And crazy as hell. I guess I got a type.”

Beth’s attention snapped back to him quick as lightning, ready to snap _don’t call me crazy,_ but his shit-eating smirk warned her he was joking.

Maybe.

“Tell Car Man the truth about us and I’ll drop my cut to twenty percent.”

Beth’s eyes went wide. “Excuse me?”

“You want him around for your kids? Fine. But I want him to know that your ass is _mine.”_

Mouth hanging open, Beth choked on an indignant reply. Because there was some part of her that still dragged around a club and lived in a cave that purred: _yes. Yes, I am yours._  

Knowing very well that her lizard brain would get her into even deeper trouble, she managed to give the correct reply. “Rio, we had sex _once_ in a _bathroom_ and you think that means I _belong_ to you?”

“Nah, baby, but we’ll remedy that soon enough. You _belong_ to me because you keep _coming back_.”

He pinned her with that dark gaze, and a liquid heat pooled low in her belly, inspiring an aching pulse in her loins. She shifted her thighs in an attempt to relieve it, but that only made it worse somehow. His gaze flicked down, as though he understood exactly the problem she was having. Hooking his long legs in her barstool, Rio pulled her closer into the circle of his body, insinuating himself into her space with his elbow on the bar. They were so _close,_ and suddenly Beth could not stop looking at his _mouth._

“I don’t know how to tell him,” she admitted, hardly recognizing her own voice. “And…it would make him unreliable. Even more unreliable than he already is. He’s a dumbass, Rio. He will do something _stupid._ ”

“Like call the cops when he had a showroom of cars paid for with counterfeit money?”

“Yes.”

_He’s a bad egg, baby. A loose end._

In any other circumstance, Rio would have pointed out the obvious, and demanded she fix it. But the possibility that he could lose her for good over it hovered real and lethal, like an axe hanging over their heads.

This was a problem he would have to ruminate a little longer.

“Fine, Mamma. Keep ‘im sweet for now.”

“ _For now?_ Rio—”

“And we’ll come to an arrangement.”

“Rio—”

He kissed her, partly to shut her up, and partly—because he _had_ to. Those full pink lips pressed against his and his heart did a dance in his chest, his limbs flooding with a warmth that was only part lust. Of their own accord his fingers found her hair, as they always did, whether she was scared or sad or driving him wild with desire. He grabbed it by the fistful at the base of her neck, winning a moan that made him rock hard right there.  

Maybe she kept coming back to him—but he sure as shit kept chasing her too, and what did that make him? By the same standard of logic…it made him hers. Hook, line, and motherfucking sinker, she had him _good._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, and you know I love to hear any comments you might have! Come yell at me on Tumblr, I'm @bethxriorideordie .


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